Howard Lutnick, President Trump’s billionaire commerce secretary, interacted with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein regularly over at least 13 years while they lived next door to one another on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, records released last week by the Justice Department show.
They invested in the same privately held company together, dealt with one another on neighborhood and philanthropic issues, and appear to have socialized in New York and the Caribbean, the records show. Mr. Epstein at one point sought to meet with Mr. Lutnick’s nanny.
The records directly contradict Mr. Lutnick’s assertion on a podcast last year that he had been so disgusted by Mr. Epstein during a 2005 visit to his townhouse that Mr. Lutnick had never set foot in a room with Mr. Epstein again.
“So I was never in the room with him socially, for business or even philanthropy,” Mr. Lutnick said in an interview on the podcast, “Pod Force One.” Reached briefly by phone last week, Mr. Lutnick said, “I spent zero time with him.”
In a statement, a Commerce Department representative said Mr. Lutnick and his wife met Mr. Epstein in 2005 and had “very limited interactions with him” over the ensuing years.
“This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments, including securing trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals and fighting for the American worker,” the statement said.
Mr. Epstein, who was convicted in Florida in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor, died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while being held on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Mr. Lutnick’s name appeared in more than 250 documents in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department, a review by The New York Times found.
The documents do not appear to portray a close friendship between the men, but show that they had a relationship typical of neighbors who ran in overlapping circles steeped in business and wealth. Though their lives intersected on occasion, the files suggest they mostly communicated through assistants, by email and not with one another directly.
The files suggest their relationship was mutual, with Mr. Epstein and Mr. Lutnick both initiating contact at different times. However, the records often lack context and might not document every interaction between the men.
In some cases, emails in the files simply reflect Mr. Epstein’s awareness of interesting tidbits about his neighbor, such as when Mr. Epstein’s lawyer pointed out that a main character in the television show “Billions” seemed to be based in part on Mr. Lutnick, or when his lawyer forwarded him an article about Mr. Lutnick’s lawsuit against a former assistant.
The Times reported last week that Mr. Lutnick and his family had planned a visit for Dec. 23, 2012, to Little St. James, Mr. Epstein’s private island off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The next day, Mr. Epstein’s assistant forwarded Mr. Lutnick a message from Mr. Epstein: “Nice seeing you,” suggesting the visit took place.
But by then the two men had already been in steady contact. Mr. Epstein’s schedule for May 1, 2011, shows a 5 p.m. appointment for drinks with Mr. Lutnick, followed by a 6:30 p.m. dinner with the filmmaker Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn. The records suggest the meetings were at Mr. Epstein’s home and that Mr. Lutnick left something behind there.
“The phone was Howard Lutnick’s, it has been collected,” one of Mr. Epstein’s employees emailed him the next day.
Mr. Lutnick bought his home at 11 East 71st Street, half a block from Central Park, for $7.6 million in 1998, based on the taxes listed in property records. Mr. Epstein lived in the mansion next door at 9 East 71st Street. (Mr. Epstein had previously owned Mr. Lutnick’s home as well, but sold it to another buyer two years before Mr. Lutnick bought it, the property records show.)
Mr. Lutnick has said that after renovations, he moved there in 2005 and was invited for a tour of Mr. Epstein’s house. Mr. Lutnick said in the podcast interview last year that he and his wife hurried out, revolted by Mr. Epstein’s use of sexual innuendo to explain why he had a massage table in the middle of a room.
They don’t appear to have had contact for several years, based on the files, but in October 2009, Mr. Lutnick wanted to speak with Mr. Epstein and asked for his phone number, according to an email Mr. Epstein received from an assistant. It is unclear if they spoke.
About a year later, in September 2010, Mr. Epstein’s assistant asked if he was interested in leasing 13 East 71st Street, a home, then unoccupied, on the other side of Mr. Lutnick’s. The assistant said she had been told that Mr. Lutnick “tried to buy #13, he had a handshake deal with the owner, but Howard lowballed them,” the files show. Mr. Epstein did not lease it, according to a broker who represented the home at the time.
In the spring of 2011, the two men went back and forth to set up a phone call, about a month before their scheduled drinks at Mr. Epstein’s home.
In early 2013, soon after Mr. Lutnick’s planned visit to the Caribbean, Mr. Epstein, through his assistant, sent Mr. Lutnick a link to an article about Antigua relating to intellectual property and gambling — subjects in which Mr. Lutnick has had a strong interest.
A few months later, both men signed on for an apparently ill-fated investment in the private company AdFin Solutions Inc., which sold itself as offering cutting-edge intelligence to buyers of online advertising. Mr. Epstein invested through an entity called Southern Trust Company, and Mr. Lutnick through a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate called CVAFH I L.L.C., the Epstein files show.
The investment did not appear to work out well for Mr. Epstein. David J. Mitchell, a businessman who had told him about AdFin, later informed Mr. Epstein and others that their ownership stakes would be diluted because Cantor Fitzgerald, led by Mr. Lutnick, had agreed to invest more money in the company and take a controlling interest.
“I feel very badly this happened as I introduced you to this investment,” Mr. Mitchell wrote. He did not respond to a request for comment.
AdFin ultimately went out of business, and Mr. Lutnick also appears to have lost money.
Even as they invested together, the men’s relationship manifested in more personal ways. In the summer of 2013, an executive at a venture capital firm emailed Mr. Epstein to ask his opinion of Mr. Lutnick, whom he had just met.
“My neighbor smart,” Mr. Epstein replied.
Later that year, Mr. Epstein’s lawyer obtained the résumé of Mr. Lutnick’s nanny and forwarded it to Mr. Epstein, emails show. The lawyer said he was trying to arrange a time for Mr. Epstein to meet her. The records do not explain the purpose of the meeting or show whether it occurred. (A representative of Mr. Lutnick said he did not supply the nanny’s résumé and did not know how Mr. Epstein’s lawyer obtained it.)
In November 2015, Mr. Lutnick, who was raising money that year for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, invited Mr. Epstein to attend “a very intimate fund-raising event” for her at Cantor Fitzgerald’s offices. Federal campaign contribution records do not show that Mr. Epstein contributed personally during that election cycle to Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump, who defeated her. Mr. Lutnick backed Mr. Trump in 2020 and 2024.
But Mr. Epstein did contribute $50,000 in 2017 to an event honoring Mr. Lutnick sponsored by the UJA-Federation of New York, a charity supporting Jewish causes.
“I want to make sure that as a close friend of the Lutnicks, you are aware of the event and have the opportunity to support them,” John Paulson, a hedge fund manager and UJA’s Wall Street chairman, wrote in an appeal to prospective donors that Mr. Epstein’s staff forwarded to him.
“50k,” Mr. Epstein replied.
The donation came from Mr. Epstein’s St. Thomas-based foundation, Gratitude America Ltd., records show. He did not attend, telling his staff that Mr. Lutnick could fill his table, nor did he take up UJA’s offer to write a congratulatory message for Mr. Lutnick, but he did agree to be listed under his name in the UJA’s “Roll of Honor.” The charity did not respond to a request for comment.
The last interactions between Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Epstein shown in the records — albeit through Mr. Epstein’s assistant — came in 2018, as the Frick Collection, a museum across the street from their homes, was proposing a construction plan.
“Are you aware as to them building to block our park views,” Mr. Lutnick wrote in an email that an assistant forwarded to Mr. Epstein. “What should do we do about it? Time is of the essence.”
Mr. Epstein wrote that he had not been aware. The assistant conveyed that to Mr. Lutnick, and then passed back to Mr. Epstein Mr. Lutnick’s plea that he write a letter and engage a lawyer to fight the project.
“Will do,” Mr. Epstein replied.
His assistant wrote to Mr. Lutnick: “Jeffrey has responded: WILL DO!”
Susan C. Beachy and Georgia Gee contributed research.
Michael Rothfeld is an investigative reporter in New York, writing in-depth stories focused on the city’s government, business and personalities.
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